UNDP in Africa

About Us

UNDP’s Regional Bureau for Africa (RBA) includes Headquarters, a Regional Service Centre based in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and 45 Country Offices. Its Headquarters are located in New York, setting UNDP’s strategic direction for the region and overseeing Country Programmes around the region.

Abdoulaye Mar Dieye of Senegal was appointed by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon as Assistant Administrator and Director of the Regional Bureau for Africa at UNDP on 16 July 2013.

UNDP now operates a single Regional Service Centre in Addis Ababa, where development specialists from diverse disciplines work to build and disseminate knowledge on Africa’s key development priorities and best practices to tackle them. The Centre provides direct support to UNDP Country Offices and manages regional projects in a number of countries across the continent, in addition to being an important point of liaison with UNDP’s key partners in the region.

Reporting to headquarters, Country Offices provide policy, programming and technical assistance to programme countries, helping them to tackle key development priorities based on principles of national ownership and leadership.

In each Country Office, the UNDP Resident Representative normally also serves as the Resident Coordinator of development activities for the United Nations system as a whole. Through such coordination, UNDP seeks to ensure the most effective use of UN and international aid resources.

UNDP’s regional programme provides the framework for our interventions in Sub-Saharan Africa. The programme aims to tackle transnational issues or common development challenges. Consistent with the African Union (AU)’s efforts to speed up economic integration and regional cooperation, the programme also works to strengthen Regional Economic Communities (RECs) while helping to harmonize continent-wide standards and mechanisms for governance, growth, development and other key issues.